The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1887-01-21
THE YEAR 1857.
Some Philosophical speeulatlors ~ 60
What It May Bring Forth.


Another "centennial'' date. that of
the Federal Constitution. We have
been a nation one hundred years. 1t
is pretty date to write; after the stiff
6s the pen fourishes so easily down the
tail of the Z. The years have somehow
run away very fast since 1850. going
down hill to the end of the century. In
fourteen short years more the Drawer
will be trying, in its faithfulness to the
twentieth century, to keep out of its
columns the facetie of the nineteenth.
The nineteenth century, of which we
are proud now, will be analysed and
criticised and condemned as we now
condescend to talk about the eighteenth.
On the day that 1901 comes in. the
same able writer's who the day before.
in the press. used the term nineteenth
century" rs if it were kind of final
achievement in itself will turn ON it in
a patronizing manner. They will speak
about the twentieth century as if they had
made it, and that it must necessarily
excel all the others. They seem great
many years. 1887. do they not? They
are really only little fragment Oftime.
which has dignity only from the fact
that we are adding to it. 1t is an old
conceit we have of it. Looked at in
one way, it is respectable date. but
how long shall we be able to add to it
and keep it going in the world? There
have been several attempts at cOntin-
uous date, but they have all broken
down. How long shall we keep up
oursP 1t is pity for scientific pur-
poses that we could not have had uni
versally, as the Hebrews have. a con-
tinuous date. Our breaking time in two
in this way causes immense historical
leads to an unjust estimate
of the past, and adds to our conceit.
1t gives the impression that the his
torical stream is not continuous; in
deed, we absurdly try to make it run
both ways from what we call the year
l. Hence much of the theological diff
Guilty in making people feel that the
New Dispensation is actually contin-
uation of the Old Dispensstion. We
begin with our and run 1t up forward,
with an increasing sense Of power.
And we turn about and cast it up back
ward for the ancient nations, endeavOr-
ing to run the civilizations of antiquity
into the ground somewhere. 1t gives
a false impression-if we may say it, a
'petering out" appearance to the old
nations. Take the Egyptians. for ex-
ample They seem to be wasting away
in time toward us. losing year after
year instead of gaining. We know, in
deed. but we have to learn it painfully,
that the Egyptians did not live back
ward in this way. 1t is. of course, alb
surd to suppose that Menes, when he
came to his throne in Memphis, dated
his order to dig the first canal 1904, ac-
corling to Marietta, or 1928 according to
or 200 according to Wilkin-
son, or whatever it was, and that every
year thereafter he dropped one year
5OO3, 1922. 2699, and SO on. And yet
this is the way it appears to our minds.
with our queer chronology. Looked at
honestly, it is not much of date. this
1897. Nor is it new. The Pharaoh
who used it-and no one knows what
it was-no doubt was consci-
Dus that it had been used before him,
and he regarded it as merely the begin
ming of the years that Egypt would pile
upin increasing glory. The Pharaoh
who wrote 1887 may have had some
ronceit in the figures, but it was u cheap
pride. The vain attempt of the Phar-
aohs in this direction ought to make us
modest of our little achievement in the
way of date. All the people before us
have doubtless flattersd themselves that
their eras would endure as long as the
world lasts.
We are interested in this year 1887.
the Court was about to say
when it interrupted itself-not because
it is a centennial year, or to speculate
it will be year of war, or
earthquake. or droughts, but to see
tits going to be good year for
realism" in fiction. or whether the
''idealists" will begin to get an inning.
1t is such a seesaw world that one can
only keep his head by. taking a long
historical perspective, and noting what
tales they are that the race cares to
preserve through all the ages. We
want to stick to facts, but there are so
many sorts of facts, material and i'm.
material, and human nature is double.
and men are perverse. They are 50
interested, even in this
age, in the Arabian Nights.
1t is absurd that camel-driver should
rise to marry the daughter Of the Grand
Vizier, and become Grand Vizier him
self, and rule over the kingdom. In
order to be true to life he should have
continued to be q camel-driver till his
camel died, and every thing went
wrong with him, and he married a
woman who drank, and took to has
heesh. and ended as beggar. 1t is
much better for us to read about
this sort of camel-driver than the other.
After all, the philosophers are merely
quarrelling about definition. 1t is as
necessary to satisfy in fiction the higher
aspirations of the mind as its lower
''high life" is as real. all
admit, as ''low life" Purity and vir-
tue are just as ''rtal'' as their opposites
Though not SO common), and the
steady contemplation of them in fiction
is more likely to be ennobling than the
contemplation of the inferior and the
vulgar. 1t is not a new notion in the